


intentions

by Waywarder



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Crowley loves Aziraphale, Emotional Hurt, Kissing, Pining, Pining During Sex, Sadness, Soft Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26308897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waywarder/pseuds/Waywarder
Summary: They were at a party.(Does it really matter when? You can decide this time, dear heart. Put them where you like. What’s the outfit you like best? Whatever you want, I promise, you can have it. You never have to ask.)What’s more important than setting is knowing they were at the sort of party where there was ample, ample wine. Endless wine, endless excuses. This was the sort of party with convenient, quiet corners. This was the sort of party designed for sneaking away.Aziraphale and Crowley sneak off into a corner at a party.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	intentions

They were at a party.

(Does it really matter when? You can decide this time, dear heart. Put them where you like. What’s the outfit of theirs you like best? Whatever you want, I promise, you can have it. You never have to ask.)

What’s more important than setting is knowing they were at the sort of party where there was ample, ample wine. Endless wine, endless excuses. This was the sort of party with convenient, dark, quiet corners. This was the sort of party designed for sneaking away.

I think Aziraphale took Crowley by the hand first. Crowley, who would happily forego the privilege of feeling any other sensation concocted by Earth if it meant he could keep holding Aziraphale’s hand within his own. He wouldn’t miss velvet, he wouldn’t think fondly back on cool marble, he wouldn’t mourn for the feel of warm, dry island sand falling from in between the creases of his skinny Hell-fingers.

He was in love and every moment of being in love was something like a chance. Some sort of dangerous, gorgeous “maybe.”

They were drunk. Weren’t they always? 

(You never have to ask. It’s yours, this dream. Put them wherever you like.)

Aziraphale did, anyway, leading them defiantly into the perfectest corner.

“Please,” came the mortified beg in the back of Crowley’s throat. He was a demon, he did not ask, he did not plead, he did not go eagerly to bed just for the hopes of dreaming of a soft-haired angel with eyes whose color he could never name. All blues could really fuck off, couldn’t they, beside the vision of Aziraphale’s eyes?

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed this time. (He didn’t always.) Whether it was from wine or exhaustion, it didn’t matter. It felt good to say “yes” to Crowley. It didn’t feel right. But it felt good. It felt marvelous. It felt like the taste of warm, sugared berries crushed beneath some sharp, buttery crust. 

“Please,” Crowley said again, because he never believed Aziraphale really understood to what he was precisely consenting. 

“Yes, dear,” Aziraphale brought a hand up to the side of Crowley’s face and the demon shuddered violently and wished the “dear” had been accompanied by a “my.”

It hurts, this transient nature of dreams. It burrows and excavates and mines you for gems you don’t think to miss until later.

 _There were emeralds here once. Did you know they’re yours now? Did you know I was a treasure chest? I didn’t know it until I was empty. Darling, write me a map, I have lost myself in your travels. Take me home._

Crowley gritted his teeth hard against another “please.” He imagined the teeth cracking and splintering and falling from his mouth in shards. Fine. Fucking great. One less sharp edge to ruin Aziraphale. 

“Can I kiss you?” Aziraphale asked, quietly, already knowing the answer, shoving away guilt at this power he’d never asked for but wielded anyway. It wasn’t fair to either of them, but what was there to do about it? 

It always went like this: a quiet question with a quieter answer. 

“Yes.”

Crowley had never been a child. Had never skinned his knees after a tumble down the hill, had never ruined his clothes in a prodigious puddle, had never cried simply over the vastness of the world. Had never been held. Had never been perplexed by a strawberry. 

_“It doesn’t taste like straw,”_ he imagined himself petulantly saying to a literal golden child, partly because it was true and partly because he knew it would make those blue eyes roll in glorious exasperation.

As he pressed his lips softly to Aziraphale’s, Crowley mourned not having been able to fall in love with him over the course of many long, sticky summers. He had just emerged as he was and then there was this impossible angel beside him, and Crowley felt what he felt. There were no lightning bugs or bits of honeysuckle or starry, starry skies.

Where did the Hell begin in him? Was it possible it could be contained? What if it was just in his fingertips, for example? Could he cut them all off in exchange for a fragrant August night with Aziraphale, barefoot and free? He would mangle himself every which way, he would.

 _Someone help the monsters. Someone deny us our capacity to love. Take it away. Carve it out with a knife. I do not want it._

No one deepened the kiss for a long while. Friends kissed sometimes, right? Perhaps it was all just a joke? Maybe Aziraphale would pull away with a sparkling laugh and wipe the Crowley from his lips and they would return to the party as though nothing had ever happened. 

Because nothing _had_ ever happened.

Crowley held his useless breath through the kiss, never daring to believe it was actually happening. It wasn’t like this in his dreams. In his dreams, he was brave and sure, wrapping himself entirely around Aziraphale, bold to assume he was allowed to take pleasure as well as offer it.

Because it was lovely, kissing Aziraphale, of course it was. But he did not know that (yet) he could call it a “pleasure.” 

They stayed silent for as long as they could, but, finally, Aziraphale couldn’t help it. His sugar mouth parted on a moan and Crowley gripped him fiercely by his shoulders, his tongue finding the angel’s. 

Aziraphale nodded, eyes fluttering closed, and Crowley snapped his fingers once, freezing the reality around them. He hated it. He didn’t think he was a particular voyeur, no, but how desperately he wanted witnesses sometimes.

“See?” He wanted to scream to a sympathetic audience. “See?! I’m not making it up. I’m not crazy.”

 _Not entirely, anyway,_ Crowley argued with himself as buttons at his chest were undone by careful, clever fingers.

“You’re beautiful,” Aziraphale said at one point, tracing fingers down Crowley’s bare chest, and Crowley privately, savagely thought: If that was true, you’d choose me.

“I thought about bringing some Parisian macarons with me tonight,” Crowley wasn’t beautiful, so he would settle for flippant, for amusing. “To impress you.”

“I’m already impressed,” Aziraphale confessed, tongue and praise thick in Crowley’s mouth. 

_Tell me,_ Crowley wanted to beg again. _I know you wouldn’t lie, but, my darling, how the fuck am I supposed to believe you?_

 _“Darling.”_ He fought to ignore the horrendously wonderful way that word settled over his heart.

Crowley never winced and hated himself over the act of kissing Aziraphale. No, he reserved those feelings for the letters he’d write in the morning and never send. His fingers shook from nerves and from black coffee as he spilled his heart out over whatever scraps of paper he could find.

 _I want to try._ Is what he would write and never send. _I want to try to be with you._

(I still.)

Aziraphale pressed Crowley up against some bit of the corner and Crowley wished he knew where he could put his hands.

(Always, maybe.)

They didn’t say much more. Or maybe they did. Words can get so easily lost in between kisses and caresses and tentative, disbelieving laughter. They both trembled, these immortal, powerful things. They were each nearly undone by the vastness of the impossible love in between them. 

Crowley dared to bring his hand to the small of Aziraphale’s back and imagined being back out in the party with him. He longed to wander some stupid party with his hand resting softly on the small of Aziraphale’s back. Not to steer him, not to possess him. Again: just as proof.

_Aziraphale’s heart: Crowley was here. Crowley belonged here._

Crowley swallowed all the vows in his throat as they descended deeper into each other. As Aziraphale kept his eyes closed and lost himself a little in the physical sensations of the thing. Crowley held back. He did not dare lose himself any deeper in Aziraphale. He would never find his way back.

“May I?” Aziraphale muttered, hoarsely, bringing a hand up to the glasses on Crowley’s face.

As always, Crowley shook his head. 

No.

 _Maybe that was it,_ Crowley thought, miserably. Oh, sure, he vowed to give Aziraphale anything and everything, but he could not give him this. He couldn’t bear to let Aziraphale see what he already knew. He knew they’d never make it back here if Aziraphale knew, if he truly knew. Aziraphale was good. Aziraphale wouldn’t do this to Crowley if he could see in those strange eyes how this stripped him to the very bone.

If Aziraphale could see, he would stop.

Crowley wasn’t ready to stop.

Aziraphale nodded, sadness clouding his eyes. He leaned forward and kissed Crowley with a softness Crowley knew he did not deserve. 

“Harder,” Crowley hated himself for asking. He couldn’t take the tenderness sometimes, couldn’t bear to be treated like a lover, like a sweetheart when he was anything but. 

Aziraphale, frustrated and wanting and coming apart, acquiesced, turning Crowley around in the circle of his arms. Crowley braced himself against the corner before him, trying something new this time. Trying to forget each wonderful feeling just as soon as it washed over him. He did not want to remember this later in his own bed, in his own fist. He would do better. He would let this love go. He would be Aziraphale’s friend and he would be good to him and he would stop being so fucking selfish and stupid and-

Aziraphale snapped his hips and Crowley gasped and immediately took it all back. He was fucking selfish and stupid and he would remain so. 

Just before, Crowley could resist his own yearning no longer. He pushed back off of the wall, pressing back tightly against Aziraphale’s chest, bringing his hands down to where the angel’s gripped his hips. Pulled those hands around his waist, encircling him. Crowley slid his own hand up and behind him, and threaded his fingers through starlight-hair he couldn’t see. He was suddenly furious. He wanted to shove and to bite and to scream. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale gasped once in his ear and there was the truth of it at last, and Crowley nearly collapsed, the sudden spark of fight out of him entirely. He was in Aziraphale’s arms and he should be so fucking grateful. 

_Yes yes yes,_ he wanted to chant. _Again. Don’t stop. We can stay just like this. We never have to get out of this corner. Just tell me that’s what you want and we’ll do it. Say the word, angel. Say it. You have to be the one to say it._

Aziraphale had the good grace not to straighten his bow tie in front of Crowley when he finally pulled away and righted himself. That was another unspoken rule. Aziraphale started it and Aziraphale finished it. Crowley was Aziraphale’s to lead. If they could actually dance, Crowley would freeze time in a dip, his head dizzy and his lips on the verge of kissing Aziraphale forever and ever. He would live on the precipice of that moment as beautiful music played in the background. 

“I-” Aziraphale began and Crowley wanted it. Whatever it was, Crowley wanted it tattooed all over his body where he could look at it every day.

Again. Proof.

(Tell me I’m not crazy. Tell me I didn’t make it up.)

I can’t tell you what Aziraphale said before he left. It isn’t entirely my story to tell. But Crowley heard it as a promise, and so it pained him like a promise. It stuck to the underside of him like some wretched hope-barnacle. It kept him going and stopped him dead in his tracks all at once and for a very, very, very long time. 

Crowley snapped his fingers and the world danced and sang again and no one ever had to know he’d been kissing the angel known as Aziraphale.

If it never happened, every time is a little bit like the first time, and Crowley was an overflowing drawer of first kisses and unsent love letters. 

He did not return to the party right away himself, but skulked away in the dark corner as he was meant to do.

As he was intended.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, thanks for being here! I hope you're doing well.


End file.
